Is there a way to make the Tkinter text widget read only?

It doesn't look like it has that attribute, but it'd be really useful to me.

Solution 1:

You have to change the state of the Text widget from NORMAL to DISABLED after entering text.insert() or text.bind() :

text.config(state=DISABLED)

Solution 2:

text = Text(app, state='disabled', width=44, height=5)

Before and after inserting, change the state, otherwise it won't update

text.configure(state='normal')
text.insert('end', 'Some Text')
text.configure(state='disabled')

Solution 3:

Very easy solution is just to bind any key press to a function that returns "break" like so:

import Tkinter

root = Tkinter.Tk() 

readonly = Tkinter.Text(root)
readonly.bind("<Key>", lambda e: "break")

Solution 4:

The tcl wiki describes this problem in detail, and lists three possible solutions:

1. The Disable/Enable trick described in other answers
2. Replace the bindings for the insert/delete events
3. Same as (2), but wrap it up in a separate widget.

(2) or (3) would be preferable, however, the solution isn't obvious. However, a worked solution is available on the unpythonic wiki:

 from Tkinter import Text
 from idlelib.WidgetRedirector import WidgetRedirector

 class ReadOnlyText(Text):
     def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
         Text.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)
         self.redirector = WidgetRedirector(self)
         self.insert = self.redirector.register("insert", lambda *args, **kw: "break")
         self.delete = self.redirector.register("delete", lambda *args, **kw: "break")

Solution 5:

If your use case is really simple, nbro's text.bind('<1>', lambda event: text.focus_set()) code solves the interactivity problem that Craig McQueen sees on OS X but that others don't see on Windows and Linux.

On the other hand, if your readonly data has any contextual structure, at some point you'll probably end up using Tkinter.Text.insert(position, text, taglist) to add it to your readonly Text box window under a tag. You'll do this because you want parts of the data to stand out based on context. Text that's been marked up with tags can be emphasized by calling .Text.tag_config() to change the font or colors, etc. Similarly, text that's been marked up with tags can have interactive bindings attached using .Text.tag_bind(). There's a good example of using these functions here. If a mark_for_paste() function is nice, a mark_for_paste() function that understands the context of your data is probably nicer.